Sweet Potato "Lasagna"

I was pondering some kind of baked, easy-to-reheat casserole situation for Liz to eat while I was out of town, while I was taking stock of the contents of the kitchen cabinets.

A jar of marinara sauce got me thinking about lasagna. I could make up a little cashew-tofu ricotta, maybe brown some mushrooms, that sounds good. Yeah.

Okay, dude, but you don't have any lasagna noodles. Okay, well, I've made a lasagna-like layered casserole with potatoes before, do I have any potatoes?

Well, you've got some sweet potatoes. And those would be a healthier option than white potatoes. Maybe this might come together into something real, here.

It's good, but I might not even use the L word to describe it. Let's call it a multilayer sweet potato marinara casserole, I guess.



To that effect, I rubbed seven smallish garnets with oil, baked them, let them cool, and then peeled and sliced them.

I also sliced ten fat white mushrooms into quarter-inch slices. I was contemplating some skinnier slices, but I decided I wanted a meatier bite. I cooked these with a splash of oil until I got a real good mahogany sear.



Ingredients:

• seven baked, peeled, sliced sweet potatoes
• about 15-20 oz sliced button mushrooms, seared in oil
• fist-sized ball of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 26 oz jar of marinara ( I used Trader Joe's)

I also made a batch of cashew-tofu "ricotta" by food processing:

• 12 oz extra-firm tofu
• 1/2 cup soaked raw almonds
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• capful of apple cider vinegar
• splash of water
• salt and pepper to taste

Get a nine by thirteen glass pan and set your oven to 350.

Later any way that makes you happy, but I put a dollop of sauce on the bottom of the pan, then a layer of potato slices,



then half the ricotta, then the mushrooms and parsley.



Repeat these layers until you run out of ingredients, then arrange any remaining sweet potato slices as attractively as possible on the top of the casserole.



I sprinkled mine with a couple heavy pinches of almond parmezan, and then slid it into the oven.

Bake 15 minutes covered with foil, and then 15 minutes uncovered.



If I'd had some spinach, frozen or otherwise, that would have been a welcome addition, but I think it turned out pretty great anyway.

Broccoli and Potato Casserole

The broccoli at Safeway looked great today.  Matt saw it, and thought back to a recipe for broccoli casserole he saw on YouTube.  This changed quite a bit from that original recipe, mostly based on what we had and didn't have in the kitchen.

Makes 6 really big servings - it could probably make 8 servings, especially with a big salad.

4 small potatoes

1/2 onion

4 cloves garlic

2 heads of broccoli

1 shredded carrot

28 oz. can of garbanzo beans

1/2 cup bread crumbs

2 t. red pepper

2 t. oregano

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Preheat oven to 350

1. Cut potatoes into dice-sized cubes, and boil until tender

2. At the same time, saute the onions and garlic in olive oil

3. Cut florets off the broccoli heads and steam until they are crisp-tender

4. Mash the garbanzo beans

5. Combine all ingredients into a bowl and mix

6. Oil 9x13 baking pan, put the ingredients into the pan and smooth it out

7. Bake for 1 hour - cover with foil for first 45 minutes, then remove foil for last 15 minutes.

Points+: 12